On October 22, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Major General John C. Frémont as commander of the U.S. Army’s Department of the West. Lincoln’s action was not unexpected. Frémont’s end-of-August martial law proclamation, which ordered freedom for the slaves of disloyal Missouri slaveholders, had caused Lincoln considerable trouble with the loyal border states. It nearly had undone the President’s hard work over the summer reassuring Unionist slaveholders there, in the face of slaves fleeing into Union army camps, that their property rights were safe. So the sentiment in Lincoln’s cabinet was that Frémont, especially in light of his defiance of the President’s attempts to get him to reverse course, would have to go. It merely took a bit of time to gather evidence of disorganization and incompetence during his brief stewardship of the Department of the West to justify the Pathfinder’s removal. But Lincoln and his men fooled no one. Anyone that cared knew the real reason was Gen. Frémont’s attempt to emancipate slaves in his jurisdiction.
John C. Frémont would pay a high personal price for his boldness. He would briefly be restored to a battlefield command in the 1862, but after losing the Battle of Cross Keys he would be sidelined for the rest of the war. Yet for the cause of emancipation, his sacrifice would be worth it. Frémont’s proclamation forced the Lincoln administration and the nation to see the logical end of the Confiscation Act passed at the beginning of August. The law did much to undermine the future of slavery. As the New York Times put it on September 3, shortly after Frémont had issued his original proclamation:
While Frémont’s proclamation predictably was panned by white Northerners who wished a war for Union only, it received support in some surprising places. Illinois Senator Orville H. Browning, a close friend of Lincoln, and by no stretch of imagination an abolitionist, privately chided the President for overruling Frémont. He wrote Lincoln in mid-September 1862, “That proclamation had the unqualified approval of every true friend of the Government within my knowledge. I do not know of an exception. Rebels and traitors, and all who sympathize with rebellion and treason, and who wish to see the government overthrown, would, of course, denounce it. Its influence was most salutary, and it was accomplishing much good. Its revocation disheartens our friends, and represses their ardor.”
Even Harper’s Weekly, definitely not an abolitionist publication, published a spirited defense of Frémont’s proclamation arguing the General in time of war was within his power to free the slaves of rebel owners in his command. It further stated:
So, John C. Frémont’s abortive proclamation showed the North where the war should be going. He also succeeded in making the possibility of freedom for the slaves more real than it had been before. Whereas before the end of slavery had not seemed a logical outcome of the war, now it was for many persons who had previously discounted the possibility. So while Frémont’s proclamation did not free many slaves, if any, in Missouri, it had a salutary effect on the national debate on slavery and emancipation and sowed seeds of freedom that as the war progressed would germinate and grow strong.
Sources: 1) http://www.nytimes.com/1861/09/03/news/the-war-and-slavery.html; 2) http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=31&subjectID=3; 3) http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/september/slave-proclamation.htm.
Public opinion is a strange bird. What is unacceptable one moment becomes acceptable the next moment. Even General Hunter’s proclamation the following May met with almost universal disapproval…but the tide was turning. Lincoln felt safe enough to issue his preliminary by September.